Bogus “challenges” to prove the scientific consensus: The M.O. of a crank

Way back in the early days of my blogging career, I remember coming across a “challenge” by a man named Jock Doubleday. I didn’t know it at the time, but Doubleday had achieved some notoriety before his “vaccine challenge” as the director or Natural Woman, Natural Man, Inc. and the author of such amazing works as The Burning Time (Stories of the Modern-day Persecution of Midwives) and Lolita Shrugged (THE MYTH OF AGE-SPECIFIC MATURITY). His “challenge” was in the same vein as his previous work, only more so and full-on antivaccine. The reason I’m bringing up Doubleday again after all these years is because just last week, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Robert De Niro teamed up to do something that reminded me very much of Doubleday’s “challenge,” something that is a classic ploy used by cranks to promote their causes. I thus viewed RFK Jr.’s new “challenge” to be what we in the biz like to refer to as a “teachable moment.”

It started out in 2001 with Doubleday offering a $20,000 cash prize (later upped to $75,000) to “U.S.-licensed medical doctors who routinely administer childhood vaccinations and to pharmaceutical company CEOs worldwide” who would…well, let’s let Jock’s own words tell the tale. The original web page no longer exists, but fortunately the Wayback Machine has it stored in all its 2006 cranky glory:

Jock Doubleday, director of the California 501(c)3 nonprofit corporation Natural Woman, Natural Man, Inc., hereby offers $75,000.00 to the first medical doctor or pharmaceutical company CEO who publicly drinks a mixture of standard vaccine additives ingredients in the same amount as a six-year-old child is recommended to receive under the year-2005 guidelines of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (In the event that thimerosal has recently been removed from a particular vaccine, the thimerosal-containing version of that vaccine will be used.)

The mixture will not contain viruses or bacteria dead or alive, but will contain standard vaccine additive ingredients in their usual forms and proportions. The mixture will include, but will not be limited to, the following ingredients: thimerosal (a mercury derivative), ethylene glycol (antifreeze), phenol (a disinfectant dye), benzethonium chloride (a disinfectant), formaldehyde (a preservative and disinfectant), and aluminum.

The mixture will be prepared by Jock Doubleday, three medical professionals that he names, and three medical professionals that the participant names.

The mixture will be body weight calibrated.

Because the participant is either a professional caregiver who routinely administers childhood vaccinations, or a pharmaceutical company CEO whose business is, in part, the sale of childhood vaccines, it is understood by all parties that the participant considers all vaccine additive ingredients to be safe and that the participant considers any mixture containing these ingredients to be safe.

The participant agrees, and any and all agents and associates of the participant agree, to indemnify and hold harmless in perpetuity any and all persons, organizations, and/or entities associated with the event for any harm caused, or alleged to be caused, directly or indirectly, to the participant or indirectly to the participant’s heirs, relations, employers, employees, colleagues, associates, or other persons, organizations, or entities claiming association with, or representation of, the participant, by the participant’s participation in the event.

The event will be held within six months of the participant’s written agreement to the above and further elaborated terms.

Doubleday concluded by listing the then-membership of the CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, whose membership he said that he’d automatically update the challenge to include. After jumping to $75,000 in 2006, it supposedly increased again to $200,000 in 2009. (When Harriet wrote about the challenge in 2008, it was $150,000.)

Obviously, those familiar with antivaccine misinformation, pseudoscience, and tropes will immediately recognize this hoary challenge as being based on what I like to refer to as the “toxins” gambit, a common antivaccine trope that targets the adjuvants and other ingredients in vaccines as horrific “toxins.” For example, there are trace amounts of formaldehyde in some vaccines, which antivaxers will portray as the equivalent of childhood vaccines being laced with embalming fluid when in reality the human body (even a baby’s) produces formaldehyde as a byproduct of normal metabolism and has far more formaldehyde the bloodstream than is contained in any vaccine. Of course, thimerosal wasn’t even in most childhood vaccines anymore by 2006, the year Doubleday increased the value of the prize to $75,000, and thimerosal at the doses contained even when thimerosal exposure due to vaccines was at its height doesn’t cause autism or other neurological or neurodevelopmental disorders.

Of course, anyone with a bit of critical thinking skills can also immediately see that this challenge is not an honest one. For one thing, drinking ingredients is not the same as injecting them intramuscularly. Even if it were, if you control for weight, the amount of thimerosal, acute toxicity with thimerosal only occurs at a dose at least 500-fold more than any infant would have received from vaccines.

However, where you can really tell that Doubleday wasn’t sincere is in the various conditions he tacked on to his challenge, which, again, the Wayback Machine has provided. Some of them are truly hilarious. For instance, Doubleday requires that participants undergo three thorough psychiatric evaluations, each performed by a different psychiatrist named by Doubleday and paid for by the participant. He also wants participants to submit to him all of their mental health records and to undergo a complete physical examination by a physician of his choice. Then there’s a requirement that the participant read several antivaccine books:

Vaccines: Are They Really Safe and Effective? by Neil Z. Miller;

Immunization: The Reality Behind the Myth, by Walene James;

Vaccination, Social Violence and Criminality: The Medical Assault on the American Brain, by Harris L. Coulter;

The Sanctity of Human Blood: Vaccination Is Not Immunization, by Tim O’Shea; and

What Every Parent Should Know About Childhood Immunization, by Jamie Murphy.

It turns out that this is a classic crank ploy: Issue a “challenge” to provide one piece of evidence that “proves” the scientific consensus, be it by not dying after drinking vaccine ingredients or…something else. I discussed RFK, Jr.’s “$100,000 challenge” to provide one—just one!—scientific study that basically absolutely proves the safety of thimerosal in vaccines. Of course, the whole thing is rigged. RFK Jr. controls who are the judges. RFK Jr. requires a $50 entry fee and, in the event of needing to resolve a dispute over the results of the challenge, half of the $400 an hour he claims that his scientific panel will charge to review the evidence. It’s every bit as bogus a challenge as Jock Doubleday’s.

Of course, it isn’t just antivaxers who like to issue “challenges.” I’ve learned of several of them over the years, coming from a wide variety of science denialists. They vary in format. One of my favorites came from a creationist named Joseph Mastropaolo, who issued what he referred to as his “Literal Genesis Trial Contest.” The contest reminded me when I first learned of it of The People’s Court, a bit of a different twist on an old game. The participant has to put up $10,000 as the price of entry, and the debate will be decided through a pseudo-legal proceeding, complete with a judge and bailiff. And Mastropaolo had the judges all picked out. What could go wrong? Well, Michael Zimmerman did take the challenge in its earlier incarnation as the Life Science Challenge, and he pointed out a lot of the same things we see in crank challenges like this all the time, the problems agreeing on definitions and on criteria to determine who “wins.”

Not surprisingly, creationist Kent Hovind also offered $250,000 to anyone who could “prove beyond reasonable doubt that the process of evolution…is the only possible way the observed phenomena could have come into existence.” Of course, Hovind’s definition of evolution was a bit…problematic:

When I use the word evolution, I am not referring to the minor variations found in all of the various life forms (microevolution). I am referring to the general theory of evolution which believes these five major events took place without God:

Time, space, and matter came into existence by themselves.

Planets and stars formed from space dust.

Matter created life by itself.

Early life-forms learned to reproduce themselves.

Major changes occurred between these diverse life forms (i.e., fish changed to amphibians, amphibians changed to reptiles, and reptiles changed to birds or mammals).

Nowhere does the theory of evolution state anything like #1-#3. It is agnostic on how the universe came into being or how life arose, and #4 is stated in a rather dodgy manner. Like most cranks issuing scientific challenges, Hovind assured people that a “committee of trained scientists will provide peer review of the evidence offered and, to the best of their ability, will be fair and honest in their evaluation and judgment as to the validity of the evidence presented” but failed to list who these scientists would be or how they would be chosen. In other words, it was a scam.

Climate science denialists have also gotten in on the act. The scientific evidence that human activity is affecting the climate, resulting in climate change consisting primarily of an overall warming of the climate, is overwhelming, but climate science denialists never miss a pseudoscientific trick in denying this finding. For instance, Steve Milloy, proprietor of the Junk Science website, issued his Ultimate Global Warming Challenge, which started out offering $100,000 (now allegedly $500,000) to anyone who can “prove, in a scientific manner, that humans are causing harmful global warming. I can’t help but note that Milloy really needs to update his website, as he still has dates in 2008 and 2009 listed as his deadline and the date for results to be announced. Nonetheless, just the other day he bragged about his “UGWC” on Twitter; so I assume it’s still on:

No winners by design, of course. After all, Milloy states that entrants “acknowledge that the concepts and terms mentioned and referred to in the UGWC hypotheses are inherently and necessarily vague, and involve subjective judgment and that “JunkScience.com reserves the exclusive right to determine the meaning and application of such concepts and terms in order to facilitate the purpose of the contest”, as well as asserting that “JunkScience.com, in its sole discretion, will determine the winner, if any, from UGWC entries.”

Same as it ever was.

I’ve even seen these sorts of “challenges” from other varieties of cranks. For instance, a 9/11 “Truther” once offered $100,000 to any engineering student who could “prove the World Trade Center buildings crashed the way the government says.” The worst one that I remember was when the Holocaust denial group Institute for Historical Review offered a $50,000 cash prize in 1979 for proof that Jews were gassed at Auschwitz. In 1981 Holocaust surviver Mel Mermelstein tried to claim the prize based on his personal experiences recounted in his autobiography By Bread Alone, which was supplemented with photos, newspaper articles, and other documents to support his claim. When IHR refused to pay, Mermelstein sued, and the court issued a judgment ordering IHR to pay Mermelstein $90,000, and write a public apology to him, with Judge Thomas T. Johnson declaring:

This court does take judicial notice of the fact that Jews were gassed to death at Auschwitz Concentration Camp in Poland during the summer of 1944. It is not reasonably subject to dispute. And it is capable of immediate and accurate determination by resort to sources of reasonably indisputable accuracy. It is simply a fact.

Perhaps the most hilarious version of this technique came from Mike Adams earlier this month, as he proclaimed Health Ranger issues “drink mercury” challenge to toxic vaccine pushers who poison infants for profit, in which he challenges “mercury vaccine pushers to simply drink a liter of the mercury of their choice and either prove it’s safe… or not.” This is about as idiotic a challenge as I’ve ever seen, outdoing even Jock Doubleday’s challenge. I wonder if I’ve already qualified. Back when I wore contact lenses and thimerosal was still in many saline solutions as a preservative, I accidentally spilled some while putting saline drops in my eyes to wet the lenses. It got into my mouth and I swallowed it. It was at least a few milliliters; so that should be about the amount that a typical 0.5 ml childhood vaccine contains—or more.

Yes, I’m laughing at Mike Adams.

A word of advice to RFK Jr. and Robert De Niro: When you use a technique beloved by creationists, antivaxers as out of touch with reality as Jock Doubleday, 9/11 Truthers, Holocaust deniers, climate science denialists, and Mike Adams (you know, the guy who is pushing something he calls elemonics), you might want to rethink your strategy.

234 Comments

Health Ranger issues “drink mercury” challenge to toxic vaccine pushers who poison infants for profit, in which he challenges “mercury vaccine pushers to simply drink a liter of the mercury of their choice and either prove it’s safe… or not.”

Adams being a gunlicking 2nd-Amendment firearms fetishist, I challenge him to simply eat the bullet of his choice and either prove it’s safe… or not.

And then there’s the case of _Dr._ Stefan Lanka, who offered €100.000 (about USD 106.000) to anyone presenting a scientific publication which proves the existence of the measles virus.

David Bardens, at the time a student of medicine, provided him with several publications, which together proved the existence of the virus, but Lanka ultimately won in court because formally a single publication was required instead of a conglomerate of papers.

Anti-vaxxers frame this as Lanka having challenged the “pro-vaccine establishment” and having won. Essentially, he has lost the case about the virus, but anti-vaxxers don’t care. They never do.

[Adams] challenges “mercury vaccine pushers to simply drink a liter of the mercury of their choice and either prove it’s safe… or not.”

The dose makes the poison. I’m pretty sure a liter of some mercury-containing compound would be toxic, and I’m equally sure that Adams won’t pay up for anything less. Even vaccines that still contain thimerosal would have several orders of magnitude less than that.

Ah, the Talking Heads song (‘Once in a Lifetime) … yes, David Byrne’s (and Brian Eno’s) wonderfully surrealistic song and ditto video is somehow strangely appropriate for the twisted world view of antivaccine cranks, in particular when it comes to science and health… Although Byrne’s rather spastic choreography may send the wrong message in this context…

Anyway, in my opinion, these “challenges” are not just bogus, they’re utterly hypocritical as well: the antivaccine cranks demand a standard of evidence for the safety of vaccines that is in fact impossible to meet (even ignoring the totally rigged nature of these challenges), yet their own claims about vaccine damage etcetera are not supported by evidence at all, or at best a sort of “evidence” that can hardly be classified as the flimsiest imaginable.

They are the ones claiming that damage is done through vaccination, contrary to at least a century of scientific consensus. So it’s up to them to come up with convincing evidence before demanding that the scientific world prove them wrong.

“[Adams] challenges “mercury vaccine pushers to simply drink a liter of the mercury of their choice and either prove it’s safe… or not.”

We should establish a Colloidal Silver Challenge – drink a liter of the stuff to prove you won’t turn a permanent shade of blue-gray. Or imbibe a similar quantity of 35% “food grade” hydrogen peroxide. Woomeisters who won’t take up these challenges are admitting the dangers!!!

I wonder if you or a reader could contrast these bogus challenges to the Randi Foundations challenge. I have no doubt there is a difference, but it would be an addition to my skeptic education if this could be pointed out.

I believe that woo-meisters ( like DJT) need to stir up controversies on a near-daily basis accusing everyone of nearly everything that is corrupt, criminal and despicable
IN ORDER to get readers/ viewers eyes off of their scurvy activities and BS.

I wonder if you or a reader could contrast these bogus challenges to the Randi Foundations challenge.

One important difference is that the terms of James Randi’s One Million Dollar Challenge were open for negotiation between applicants and the James Randi Educational Foundation, as opposed to the unilateral and rather onerous terms stipulated by these antivaccine cranks.
Also, no financial barriers were set up; instead, applicants were simply asked to provide preliminary ‘credentials’ in the form of at least a local reputation and support from at least one academic source. No doubt, others can point out several more differences (e.g. unbiased judgment of test results).
To my knowledge, not one of approximately a thousand candidates over the years contested the fairness of the challenge, even though they invariably failed the test.

And oh, another important difference is the overall nature of the challenge: the JREF challenge was relatively simple, usuallly asking to demonstrate a single positive (e.g. correctly dowsing 8 out of 10 hidden objects or something like that), whereas this antivaccine challenge demands proof of a universal negative (safety can only be defined as the absence of harm), defined in vague wording (‘safe’ is not a precise qualification at all), in the form of just one study, no less.

What better way to diffuse the issue of the safety of injecting mercury than to jumble it in with nonsense? Like drinking vaccines (ridiculous false equivalency); “climate science denialism” (doublespeak–no one denies climate science, they just disagree about what it proves); and biblical creationism versus Darwinian theory (false dialectic–there are many other possibilities).

The lesson: don’t challenged so-called “consensus science” (two incompatible terms combined to imply indisputable truth). If you do, you’ll be laughed at. “OMG, no–anything but that!” Derision is a primary tool of thought control. But hey, I guess you gotta work with what you have. 😀

I’m not sure why the equivalence is false when the comparison is in that those who try to challenge the scientific consensus offer unwinnable, insincere challenges as gambits when they can’t win on the merits.

Do you see any meaningful difference in RFK’s behavior, compare to the other challengers?

@Dorit Reiss — The safety of injecting mercury has nothing whatsoever to do with the so-called “consensus” on climate and human history, and your assertion about “gambits” that “can’t win on the merits” is false. You are employing the same strategy employed in this article. It’s interesting that a relatively minor challenge to the vaccine paradigm, like eliminating mercury, is facing such ferocious opposition–considering RFK is staunchly pro-vaccine.

I note you must not have read my original response, as you failed to address the false equivalency, doublespeak, and false dialectic mentioned there. The entire purpose, nature and terms of each of the challenges are all very different. I don’t see how it’s possible to miss that.

I have held off commenting on this because it’s tangential at best to the subject of the thread, but this caught my eye right away when I first read the post this morning. I don’t doubt that, e.g., certain women are more sexually mature at 16 than certain other women are at 18, but the analogy to Nabokov is way off base, for at least two reasons:
1. Lolita is only 12 years old. There is a reason the age of consent is higher than that in most jurisdictions that have one.
2. More importantly, Humbert is Lolita’s stepfather. That’s inappropriate no matter how old she is (cf. Woody Allen and Soon-Yi Previn).
I haven’t read Doubleday’s book (and don’t think I want to), so I don’t know for sure that Doubleday was making a case for incest, but that’s the appearance this book title gives.

It’s interesting that a relatively minor challenge to the vaccine paradigm, like eliminating mercury…

Um, in cause you haven’t noticed: thimerosal was eliminated from all or virtually all childhood vaccines in 2001. The effects of this measure became exceedingly clear in the years to follow: none whatsoever. There was no noticeable change in children’s health whatsoever, including the autism ratio.
This alone is very solid proof that the ‘mercury’ in vaccines had no significant effects on the health of children, and that RFK’s ‘challenge’ is not just disingenuous, but in fact plain stupid. The evidence he is demanding has already been delivered in vast abundance in the past fifteen years.

Um, in case you haven’t noticed, thimerosal is still contained in flu vaccines given to children, pregnant woman and other adults; in a few other childhood vaccines; and in millions of doses of vaccines given to children in third world nations.

RFK has stated unequivocally many times that he is a strong believer in vaccines, and that all his children are fully vaccinated. It sounds like you haven’t bothered to read much about this issue before making up your mind about it, Richard.

There was no noticeable change in children’s health whatsoever, including the autism ratio.

Actually, that’s not true. There was a change — the autism rate has continued to rise, which of course the autism alarmists have continued to hype despite the fact that it even more soundly defeats their fretting about mercury in vaccines. Whatever is causing the rise in diagnoses*, it’s clearly not mercury. Anyone who still insists it must be is therefore clearly not interested in the real cause of autism; they just want to prove their pet theory correct.

*Increased surveillance, greater willingness to diagnose “edge” cases, diagnostic substitution, greater focus on keeping kids in school rather than letting them drop out, a more intensive environment making the condition more disabling than it used to be, maybe even an actual increase in incidence due to increased parental age and so forth, etc.

This is exactly backwards. Derision is a tool typically employed to fight against people in comfortable if not powerful positions doing ridiculous things, like offering a reward they have no intention of paying. Which is what RFK Jr. is doing here. Or insisting that news linking him to Russia is fake and the people leaking the information should be punished, as Donald Trump is doing.

There are people who try to use derision as a tool for bullying, but that hardly ever works. Humor is much more effective when it punches up than when it punches down.

I thought I would take a look at what would happen if you were to drink a liter of elemental mercury. The first issue is that a liter of mercury basically weighs 30 pounds. 30 pounds is a little much for your stomach at one time.

From MedlinePlus:
ELEMENTAL MERCURY

Elemental mercury is usually harmless if it is touched or swallowed. It is so thick and slippery that it usually falls off the skin or leaves the stomach and intestines without being absorbed.

You will have problems if you inhale minute droplets of mercury.

A person could drink a liter of mercury (of your choice) not have mercury poisoning. Drinking it would not be pleasant for reasons I think we can all imagine.

thimerosal is still contained in flu vaccines given to children, pregnant woman and other adults

Only the flu vaccines in multidose vials still contain thimerosal. The vast majority of children receive the 0.5 ml single dose variety. And in lots of countries including here in the Netherlands, thimerosal has never been used in childhood vaccines; yet here too, autism and other disorders are just as prevalent as they are in the US. So it is very safe to state that no, thimerosal in vaccines has no effect on children’s health.

RFK has stated unequivocally many times that he is a strong believer in vaccines…

Yes, I know that. But then could you explain why he does very stupid things such as offer this bogus ‘challenge’ which only serve to undermine the public’s trust in vaccines? And also please note that politicians are not exactly known for their truthfulness — especially the one presently residing in the White House and those hobnobbing with aforementioned specimen.

Anyone who receives a flu vaccine at a drug store–which many do–will typically received the multi-dose vaccine, and they are given elsewhere as well. I’m not sure on what basis you conclude that the “vast majority of children” do not, but children are far from the only people who get the flu vaccine.

The issue is not whether thimerosal causes autism. No vaccine causes autism–the issue is brain damage, one manifestation of which may be autism, a behavioral disorder. And thimerosal is not the only suspected culprit. Dozens of cases of brain injuries that included autism have actually been compensated in the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program.

As for your deep conviction that injecting mercury is safe, well…I guess you should have no problem claiming that $100k. The terms of the challenge do not seem particularly onerous.

@Calli Arcale, #29
Well, yes, the number of ASD diagnoses kept rising unabatedly, so yes, that is change. But it is of course clear what I mean: abandoning thimerosal in the vast majority of childhood vaccines was not followed by any sudden change in the state of health or health trends.

NWO Reporter” “It’s interesting that a relatively minor challenge to the vaccine paradigm, like eliminating mercury, is facing such ferocious opposition”

RFK Jr. is criticized because he (like you) leaves a false impression that mercury pervades the childhood vaccine schedule, when in reality only one vaccine (multidose flu) still contains it, most kids get the single-dose version, and thimerosal has not been shown to have any detrimental health effects anyway.*

Lying and obfuscation are tools of thought control that antivaxers should stop using.

*just let it go, like the many antivaxers that have gone on to other vaccine “toxins” like aluminum, casein, albumin, sucrose, aborted baby parts, rusty auto parts, eye of newt etc.

A person could drink a liter of mercury (of your choice) not have mercury poisoning. Drinking it would not be pleasant for reasons I think we can all imagine.

IIRC, people drank mercury (in smaller quantities) in the Renaissance years, to treat constipation. The idea was that anything that heavy was going to go *somewhere*, and anything in the way would come out first. Then you could retrieve the Hg from the chamberpot, wash it, and save it for next time (Renaissance cuisisne had a lot to answer for).

How much this contributed to the general craziness of the Renaissance intellectual milieu is a moot point.

How cute… NWO Troll pretends to believe the Creationist theocrats when they pretend to only want intellectual diversity. Remember when they tried to rebrand their creationist textbooks as “Intelligent Design” and screwed up the search-&-replace?

The rival schools of thought are
1. Gradual changes of species through inherited variations; or
2. A powerful magical fairy did it.

Anyone who receives a flu vaccine at a drug store–which many do–will typically received the multi-dose vaccine, and they are given elsewhere as well.

False. The vast majority of flu jabs available are thiomersal-free. Pharmacies carry primarily single dose jabs. Children and pregnant women receive primarily, if not exclusively thiomersal-free jabs. You’d be very hard-pressed to find someone who has received a TCV.

Looks like our latest troll (or latest incarnation of Fendlesworth, if that’s what he is) is projecting like a multiplex theater. Nobody is saying that thimerosal is the only way to preserve vaccines. It is used when preferred methods such as cool storage are not available.

Believe it or not, there are places in the world where reliable electric service is not available. For instance, war zones: war tends to do nasty things to infrastructure.[1] The people who live there don’t need preventive health care any less than us first worlders.

And then he tops it off by invoking Linus “Vitamin C Cures Everything” Pauling.

And then he tops it off by invoking Linus “Vitamin C Cures Everything” Pauling.

I don’t think he went quite that far, but you should listen to quantum chemists when it comes to molecules.

Just because the cardiologists didn’t want to abandon their little con game for a cheap molecule doesn’t mean you have to ridicule the man. There is no indication that would lead me to believe that Pauling is incorrect in his assessment of the ætiology of cardiovascular disease.

You should read his Journal articles before you ridicule him. His quantum mechanical treatment of hybrid bond geometry proves that he was not a flake, but a very hard-headed scientist.

I have to say, that picture at the top of the post with RFK Jnr in front of a “National Press Club” sign, that is the ugliest-ass kerning I have seen for a long time.
You would think that the NPC could afford a half-competent typographer. Please make it go away.

Orac – Pardon the digression, but check out the current “special issue” of National Geographic on the news stands and supermarket checkout lines. “Home Remedies.” With a big bowl of pretty herbs & flowers on the cover. And plenty of articles that appear to tout quackery & BS. I didn’t bother to look inside while I was on the checkout line because a) didn’t have my glasses and b) didn’t want to be seen reading dreck (yah, “coward!”, guilty as charged).

Don’t let it cause you to ditch this forum (for anyone who doesn’t know, this site is owned by National Geographic). Better to do a scathing takedown; presumably TPTB won’t retaliate because you have the biggest audience of anyone on this site. (I’ll bet that two of the tactics used in the magazine are “both-siderism” and “self-serving questions.”)

@Alain: gnats are only interesting under glass. Otherwise they are just small annoying buzzy things. Like Jake. How amusing that he still has a bee in his bonnet about Orac.

C’mon, Jake, can’t you investigate the real criminals like Suzanne Humphries or Sherry Tenpenny? People who advocate abuse and injury to austistic persons?

@Eric Lund: Pauling was pretty brilliant when it came to chemistry. However, he did go bats*** crazy over Vitamin C, even when studies showed it didn’t do what he claimed it did. IIRC, double-blinded studies showed it *may* reduce the length of a cold by a day or so. But it didn’t have any of the other wonderful effects that its proponents claim it does.

Do you get the thimerosal-free version for your children, Science Mom? Do you think it matters?

It’s all we’ve ever been offered. In fact that’s all that was on campus during uni flu jab drives years ago. But it doesn’t matter to me because I know what a piteously small amount of thiomersal is in a jab.

A “piteously small amount”…multiplied by a yearly vaccine from age 6 months to 80 years. Hmm…makes sense. If given a choice, why not go for the thimerosal-containing version–I’m sure you could request it. You could use your child to prove a point…assuming he elected to continue with the plan as an adult. What could possibly go wrong? 🙂

You mean the only person as far as I am aware to be awarded to single person Nobel Prizes in Chemistry? Or in any field, I believe.

Lots of people have won single person Nobel Prizes. Literature is almost always awarded to a single person, and the Peace Prize is frequently awarded to a single person or organization. It’s less common these days for the science Nobels to be awarded to a single person, but looking at the list of all winners, I see the following single winner science prizes just in the last ten years:
2016, Physiology or Medicine, Yoshinori Ohsumi “for his discoveries of mechanisms for autophagy”
2015, Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Science, Angus Deaton “for his analysis of consumption, poverty, and welfare”
2014, Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Science, Jean Tirole “for his analysis of market power and regulation”
2011, Chemistry, Dan Shechtman “for the discovery of quasicrystals”
2010, Physiology or Medicine, Robert G. Edwards “for the development of in vitro fertilization”
2007, Chemistry, Gerhard Ertl “for his studies of chemical processes on solid surfaces”
Single winner awards were more common in the early days of the Nobel Prizes. Physics last had a single winner in 1992 with Georges Charpak “for his invention and development of particle detectors, in particular the multiwire proportional chamber” (the Chemistry award that year was also to a single person, Rudolph A. Marcus “for his contributions to the theory of electron transfer reactions in chemical systems”, as was the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Science, Gary S. Becker “for having extended the domain of microeconomic analysis to a wide range of human behaviour and interaction, including nonmarket behaviour”). All of the 1971 Nobel Prizes were awarded to single individuals, the most recent year this has happened.

I think the second “to” in your quoted sentence was meant to be “two” which gives a slightly different slant on it. If so jrkrideau was nearly correct. Apparently Linus Pauling is the only person to have won two unshared Nobel prizes. He won the prize for chemistry in 1954 (for his work on the chemical bond) and the Nobel Peace Prize in 1962 in recognition of his peace activism. He was certainly a brilliant chemist but, as mentioned above, he went “emeritus” over vitamin C, biology being outside his area of expertise.

Some of the conversation about Linus Pauling is hilarious. He wins a Nobel Prize, thereby demonstrating his brilliance within the approved paradigm…but as soon as he steps outside the approved paradigm, he’s a crank. Does it ever occur to any of you who are disrespecting his work that you aren’t brilliant enough to pass judgment on it? But who am I kidding…you have plenty of “experts” within the approved paradigm from whom to regurgitate an opinion. 😀

Some of the conversation about Linus Pauling is hilarious. He wins a Nobel Prize, thereby demonstrating his brilliance within the approved paradigm…but as soon as he steps outside the approved paradigm, he’s a crank. Does it ever occur to any of you who are disrespecting his work that you aren’t brilliant enough to pass judgment on it?

It’s as common as dirt for Nobelists to go emeritus. Does it ever occur to you that there may have been a long time between his work that was honored and his babbling about vitamin C? Or so much as to see how it’s held up since he shuffled off the mortal coil? The references in How to Feel Better and Live Longer were quite underwhelming, as I recall, but it’s in storage.

A “piteously small amount”…multiplied by a yearly vaccine from age 6 months to 80 years. Hmm…makes sense. If given a choice, why not go for the thimerosal-containing version–I’m sure you could request it. You could use your child to prove a point…assuming he elected to continue with the plan as an adult. What could possibly go wrong?

You’re ignorant. You haven’t proven any harm from thiomersal-containing vaccines and put up a flaming strawman when you couldn’t paint me into a corner. We all have had plenty of TCVs numpty and thiomersal doesn’t accumulate like that. By the by, less thiomersal and a higher autism prevalence; it’s a complete non-starter.

I’d agree thimerasol is certainly not the only, or even the worst, perpetrator of brain injury from vaccines. Autism can be one manifestation of it, certainly not the only one, but it’s a diagnosis of behavior, not of brain injury.

It shuld also be noted tha Krebiozen recounted his testing it out on more than one occasion. I leave it to someone wiho’s less stressed out and actually has a working machine to dig up the best version.

The mere fact that a famous and brilliant scientist said something – regardless of the evidence for or against – is not actionable evidence, period. You’re talking to the grown-ups now.

Seriously. Elementary fallacy, one of the first ones taught in any critical thinking course. Pathetic.

NWO – you’re not serious, certainly not brilliant. You don’t understand the elementary concepts of evidence. I know this will make your head explode, but if someone pulled out the same fallacy in favour of a position I agreed with, I’d say the same thing. Rationality is topic-independent and certainly not decided by a ‘star system’.

I don’t recall saying, or even implying, that the fact a famous and brilliant scientist said something is actionable evidence–and can’t imagine why I would, since if anything, it is exactly opposite the opinion I hold. You think I don’t understand the elementary concepts of evidence, eh? Interesting. But if you’re going to be so generous with the insults, you might want to include the specific comment you’re referring to that prompted your opinion. Otherwise it just sounds like a pathetic attempt to inflate yourself. 🙂

If given a choice, why not go for the thimerosal-containing version–I’m sure you could request it.

Your assuredness is misplaced. I always request extra mercury, and nobody has multtidose vials. This is unsurprising, as they, y’know, expire after opening, so the only place one is likely to find them is at a large-scale event. Neither pharmacists nor the local university medical center has had them for me.

“Unless you’re a child in a poor third world country. But who cares about them anyway, right?”

Certainly not antivaxers, who trivialize measles as a minor ailment, when it still kills about 135,000 children every year (way down from when it used to kill 2.6 million a year, before widespread measles vaccination was instituted).

I also ask for extra thimerosal each year when I go in for my flu shot, but they only have the single-dose version available. 🙁

You may want to review the history of deaths from measles in the industrialized world from around 1900 forward. While deaths were once common from it, they had dramatically declined to extremely low levels long before the vaccine was licensed in 1963. It was known as such a benign disease, many parents never even had a need to seek medical care. The reason deaths from measles are still common in the third world is due to chronic malnutrition, poor sanitation and contaminated water–the same problems that once plagued the industrialized world. A child living in those conditions is at risk of death from virtually anything that an ordinary healthy person can easily handle with no problems.

@NWO: if thimerosol was so bad for you, many, many of my generation (1960s) would have been autistic, since Merthiolate (TM) was the antiseptic of choice for most households and was slapped liberally on any open wound (not counting the times we used it to differentiate the “Indians” from the “Cowboys” by painting it all over any exposed skin we had. It was used copiously. Yet, weirdly, very few of my generation had autism diagnoses.

We had plenty of “weird” or “retarded” kids, but no autistic ones. Gee…wonder what happened to the kids who were either “weird” or “retarded”? You might actually think the diagnostic criteria changed or something…

since Merthiolate (TM) was the antiseptic of choice for most households and was slapped liberally on any open wound (not counting the times we used it to differentiate the “Indians” from the “Cowboys” by painting it all over any exposed skin we had. It was used copiously. Yet, weirdly, very few of my generation had autism diagnoses.

Missing the right parenthesis.
Are you seriously asking us to believe that you painted your face with merthiolate?
Are you thinking about mercurochrome?

I’d agree thimerasol is certainly not the only, or even the worst, perpetrator of brain injury from vaccines. Autism can be one manifestation of it, certainly not the only one, but it’s a diagnosis of behavior, not of brain injury.

You just contradicted yourself. Encephalitis on the order of ~1:1mil doses of vaccines (primarily MMR) is the only “brain injury” resulting. You know what causes far more “brain injuries” than that?

The reality is, each branch of science has a lot of knowledge that can only be acquired by years of intense study in that field. A photoplasty contest on the Cracked Website described it.

I don’t see how this follows. You are merely stating the obvious.
People who have original theories are not necessarily branded a quack just for that reaso; this word is reserved for competitors of the AMA and does not necessarily mean that the person has been prove wrong.
Some of the most effective healers of cancer are quacks, by definition.
I would take a quack over a maimstream oncologist anyday, and you should too.

The fact that Linus Pauling won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry twice does not automatically mean that he knew what he was talking about when he mentioned Vitamin C as a Panacea. That was my point.

People who have original theories are not necessarily branded a quack just for that reaso; this word is reserved for competitors of the AMA and does not necessarily mean that the person has been prove wrong.

It means that, according to our current state of knowledge, their hypothesis is dubious, to put it politely.

Some of the most effective healers of cancer are quacks, by definition.

It was considered inevitable…it was so contagious that it was a forgone conclusion that every child would eventually catch it & since there was no treatment (until the wide-spread use of antibiotics, which allowed for the control of secondary infections and pneumonia, which was common in cases of measles), parents just had to hope and pray that their child wasn’t one who died, or went deaf or blind.

Then there is the pesky SSPE – a 100% fatal complication of measles which occurs in around 1 in 2000 or 3000 cases. It still kills kids today.

Of course, modern medicine could keep kids alive better. Even Iron Lungs could keep people from dying of Polio – but it wasn’t until vaccines that we could actually prevent people from being infected in the first place.

I’m always amazed at the ignorance of people like you, who obviously no nothing about immunology, biology or even medical history.

A “benign” disease: one for which full recovery is typical for an ordinary healthy child, and complications are not expected. Measles was very much a benign disease in the industrialized world long before the vaccine was licensed. The data is very clear in this regard. Most children recovered fully without any need for medical intervention at all, and were left with lifelong immunity–which the vaccine is unlikely to provide.

I am also amazed that anti-vaxers consider a disease “benign” which, even today in western countries, kills around 1 in 1000 people who get it…and also has the added benefit of causing SSPE, which is 100% fatal.

According to the manufacturer’s insert for the MMR vaccine, serious adverse reactions that have occurred following vaccination include (among others): vasculitis; atypical measles; pancreatitis; diabetes mellitus; thrombocytopenia; leukocytosis; anaphylaxis; arthritis; encephalitis; pneumonia; nerve deafness; retinitis; and death. In addition, MMR has not been evaluated for carcinogenic or mutagenic potential. The question is always about weighing risks and potential benefits.

Here’s something most anti-vaxers don’t get – even contracting measles is no guarantee of lifelong immunity. Between 8 – 10% of those who contract the disease won’t sero-convert, which means they can get the disease again.

Also, if the vaccine wasn’t effective, explain how we went from hundreds of thousands of cases per year (in the US) to effectively having zero domestic cases per year.

And let’s talk about the hundreds of schools for the deaf and blind, which are no longer needed…..childhood diseases like the measles and mumps were the #1 case of pediatric deafness and blindness.

Funny, don’t see too many schools for the deaf and blind around anymore.

According to the manufacturer’s insert for the MMR vaccine, serious adverse reactions that have occurred following vaccination…

Argument by Package Insert? Seriously? Just because an adverse event is mentioned in a Package Insert doesn’t mean that the vaccine caused the adverse event, just that the adverse event occurred within a certain time of the vaccination. Package Inserts are CYA Documents written by lawyers, and have to include adverse events reported, even when there is no good evidence that the vaccine caused the event in question.

Well, considering that many of those listed risks have been the basis for awards for vaccine injuries in the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, it does seem prudent to consider them, doesn’t it? But sure–why even entertain the idea that, for example, a case of atypical measles might actually have something to do with the vaccine? 😀

According to the manufacturer’s insert for the MMR vaccine, serious adverse reactions that have occurred following vaccination include (among others):

And you don’t know how to read a package insert either. Hint: “reported” =/= “causal”. Measles was not benign for crying out loud. In the U.S alone measles mortality has been ~1-3/1000 cases, which translates to ~4-5k deaths/year prior to the introduction of the vaccine. That doesn’t include SSPE which is 100% fatal.

Except that many cases of measles were never even reported by that time, because it had become such a benign disease, many parents never even sought medical care. But, nice try. BTW, hint: Don’t try to convince parents they shouldn’t pay any attention to the adverse events listed on the manufacturer’s vaccine insert. It makes you sound like a psychopath.

You’re hilarious, in a dark, sick way. Doctors don’t even show the manufacturer’s vaccine insert to parents unless they specifically ask, and you and others are on here trying to convince parents to pay no attention to the serious adverse events listed there because there’s no “proof” the vaccine caused them. Never mind that many of those adverse events have actually been compensated in the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program many, many times. And never mind that such “proof” would be impossible to determine to a certainty. Yikes.

One of the woo-meisters I survey claims to have had a close relationship to LP wherein he learned about the many benefits of overdosi… I mean using MEGAdoses of vitamins to cure just about everything. ( -btw- IIRC, Pauling died of cancer)

– Supposedly, they both did research at the Institute for Applied Biology ( which may or may have ever existed) involving chemotherapy.
– Later, the woo-meister enlisted physicians and nurses as enablers to help cancer and hiv/aids patients to overdose on vitamin C via IV.
– AFAIK this practice continues under the auspices of the infamous woo-nurse, Luanne Pennesi of NY ( website Metropolitan Health)

Except that many cases of measles were never even reported by that time, because it had become such a benign disease, many parents never even sought medical care.

Do you even know the difference between morbidity and mortality?

BTW, hint: Don’t try to convince parents they shouldn’t pay any attention to the adverse events listed on the manufacturer’s vaccine insert. It makes you sound like a psychopath.

Did you even read the package insert and clinical trials where that information was derived? All events have to be reported whether they are caused by the vaccine or not. Are you seriously going to claim that diabetes is caused by MMR? Typical antivaxxer.

But, nice try. BTW, hint: Don’t try to convince parents they shouldn’t pay any attention to the adverse events listed on the manufacturer’s vaccine insert. It makes you sound like a psychopath.

Let me get this straight: Because there is no “proof” the vaccine caused the injury–which would be difficult to discern with certainty, even if the effort were made to do so–parents should ignore the adverse events that occurred following vaccination, even though many of the listed injuries have actually been compensated many times in the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program? Makes perfect sense in a satirical world–and the entire vaccine paradigm is most certainly a dark satire of science.

According to the manufacturer’s insert for the MMR vaccine, serious adverse reactions that have occurred following vaccination include [long list redacted]

You fell for one of the classic blunders. The best known is, never get involved in a land war in Asia. But almost as well known is this: Just because B occurs after A does not mean that A causes B. This one is so old it has a Latin name: Post hoc ergo propter hoc.

Some of the conditions listed might have plausible causal connections to the vaccine, but many of them do not, and some of the ones that do have other possible causes as well.

And even when an adverse event leads to a payout by the Vaccine Court, remember that the standards of evidence in the Vaccine Court are significantly lower than in regular courts, as Orac has explained repeatedly. In regular civil court, you have to show by preponderance of evidence that the vaccine produced the adverse event, and the defense would be able to introduce evidence that other things may have caused the event. In Vaccine Court, IIRC, you only have to prove a plausible causal relationship.

Nice try at condescension, but I made no such “blunder.” In fact, NO ONE as far as I can see has claimed that the listing of an adverse event on the manufacturer’s vaccine insert amounts to PROOF POSITIVE that the vaccine caused the injury. And yet, so many keep trying to “dispel a misconception” that never happened.

I think the average parent is fully capable of understanding the concept, and according the appropriate amount of weight to the serious injuries listed on the manufacturer’s insert, when weighing the risks and potential benefits of any vaccine. To suggest they ignore the adverse events listed on the insert is incredibly irresponsible.

Any and all “adverse events” are required to be reported as part of the manufacturers insert, as it is a legal document, not a scientific one.

In fact, broken bones would be required to be reported on the insert as well.

And all adverse events are noted and tracked, to see if they are related. Which is why we not only have VAERS, but the Vaccine Safety datalink, which is an active reporting system as well.

And also why follow up studies are done. In fact, the safety tracking systems are so sensitive, that researchers were able to determine that the original Rotavirus vaccine was responsible for one additional serious adverse event, per 100,000 doses, which was enough to have the vaccine withdrawn from the market.

Your comment is incredibly deceptive. “Safety tracking systems are sensitive…” Really? Even the CDC admits that less than 10% of all adverse events following vaccination are ever reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System–and many investigators place the estimate at 1% or less. Reporting is completely voluntary. Many doctors don’t use it, for obvious reasons, and many parents don’t even know it exists.

1) The CDC admits no such thing. The information cited by anti-vaxers is actually related to adverse events for medication, nothing about vaccines.

In fact, serious adverse events are “more” likely to be reported, not less. The events not likely to be reported include, soreness at the injection site & a fever lasting less than a day, which constitutes the bulk of events that occur after vaccination.

And as I stated above, VAERS is merely one system used to track vaccine safety (in fact, it was VAERS reports which started the investigation into the Rotavirus vaccine).

The Vaccine Safety Datalink is an active system, which is utilized by medical professionals and care networks around the country.

You also appear not to have ever read a VIS – which is given by every doctor to every patient receiving a vaccine. Not only is VAERS specifically mentioned, but the NVICP is also mentioned, specifically. And each and every patient is required to be given the VIS, by law.

And even before a vaccine is approved, it is required to go through the exact same clinical trial process for any drug – which includes multiple testing phases, of which phase I & phase II are specifically designed for safety testing.

Anti-vaxers claim they have “researched” but you really are incredibly ignorant about basic facts regarding vaccines and vaccine tracking.

And yes, all adverse events reported during clinical trials are required to be reported and listed, including car accidents, broken bones, and even drownings (whether they are related to the drug in question or not).

Lol! According to the FDA, the Adverse Reaction section should include events “for which there is some basis to believe there is a causal relationship between the drug and the occurrence of the adverse event.” Please link to a vaccine insert–any insert–that lists “car accident” or “drowning” as an adverse reaction. 😀

@Lawrence von Ribbentrop
But to imply that something so biologically implausible as broken bones could actually be listed on a vaccine label is just ridiculous.

No doubt there were car accidents after vaccinations. There is no declared risk of auto accidents on the vaccine inserts. The adverse events need more proof (or at least plausibility) than simple association.

You’re trying to make a mockery out of the anti-vaccine movement.

The fact is, many people have died following vaccinations. This is not a laughing matter; there is no need to ridicule our position.

NWO @140: You said ” and many parents don’t even know it exists.” That’s funny, I was just looking at the vaccine information sheets for several vaccines and *all* of them listed both the likely side-effects, the unlikely but serious side effects and the VAERS website and phone number with instructions to report any and all side effects.

So if parents don’t know it exists it’s not for lack of trying on the part of VAERS, the vaccine manufacturers and doctors.

I agree with you there. Seems like a lot of parents have such blind trust in their doctors, they don’t bother to read the information sheets very well, much less the manufacturer’s insert. Nor do they research the actual history of the disease, to determine what the risks of a serious outcome actually are–they just assume it’s a scary disease their child is at great risk for.

Poor Lawrence is making a mockery of himself. According to the FDA, the Adverse Reaction section on the vaccine insert includes events “for which there is some basis to believe there is a causal relationship between the drug and the occurrence of the adverse event.” But by all means, link us to an insert that lists “car accident” or “drowning.” It surely could not make vaccines look worse than they already do. 😀

I was watching a program about the folklore of Britain and one of the things that struck me was the belief in “changelings”, which were fairy children who replaced your child after it was stolen by the fairies.
Among the ways that you could tell your child had been replaced by a changeling was changes in behavior or odd behaviors or physical disabilities.

And I wondered how many of these “changelings” were kids with SSPE? Behavioral changes, sickliness, physical degradation, that sounds like it could have been SSPE (or a whole lot of other things).

“for which there is some basis to believe there is a causal relationship between the drug and the occurrence of the adverse event.”

Exactly! Nice find. All Lawrence does is put on his spinny-propeller-hat and goes “Woo!”; he contrives a ridiculous scenario in order to take the edge off the gravity of the situation, among other things.

Ridiculous. I bet he get’s paid to do this. Two people who comment here have IP addresses within one mile of the CDC in Atlanta. I can verify this.

My great aunt died of polio and my great uncle wore braces for the rest of his life after polio. Please stop pretending that people’s lived experiences don’t matter, or that this is not a terrible disease.

It should be clear that B following A provides “some basis to believe” that A caused B–even if, as in the specific case of the Tripedia vaccine causing autism (or SIDS!) that “basis” is at odds with the scientific literature and common sense.

The Code of Federal Regulations; Title 21, Volume 7; Revised as of April 1, 2014; Sec. 600.80 (“Postmarketing reporting of adverse experiences”) requires the vaccine manufacturer to “report to FDA adverse experience information” and specifically defines adverse experience as “any adverse event associated with the use of a biological product in humans, whether or not considered product related.”

The Code continues:

“A report or information submitted by a licensed manufacturer under this section (and any release by FDA of that report or information) does not necessarily reflect a conclusion by the licensed manufacturer or FDA that the report or information constitutes an admission that the biological product caused or contributed to an adverse effect.”

@luna1580: I sure hope I’m not one of those West Atlanta IP addresses you found. Why, I thought my VPN logins would block all that.

Seriously…I live nowhere near Atlanta, except that I do live on the East Coast as opposed to the Midwest or the West Coast.

I always find it sad that people claim that “back then, people weren’t afraid of measles.”. Unfortunately, my MD grandfather is dead, or he would have told you how much he feared measles – so very much so that when the individual vaccines for measles and mumps were available, he gave them to everyone in the family – even though my mom’s generation had pretty much all had measles and mumps, as had my brother and I. Then, when the MMR came out, he made sure we got THAT, too.

He wasn’t charging us for the vaccines. Makes you wonder why he was so afraid of the diseases…maybe because he’d SEEN what they could do.

Oh, and by the way – even with having had mumps and measles, and several MMR’s, I’m a non-converter. So I depend on herd immunity to protect ME from getting measles or mumps at my age. Fortunately, I don’t have any anti-vax friends. Anti-doctor, yes…but even those friends will hit the local drug store for the flu vaccine every year (as do I).

Someone might try to argue that this doesn’t count, because the motor vehicle accident occurred within the placebo group, not within the vaccine group. But the very point that was to be proved is “just because an occurrence is listed in the adverse events section of a vaccine insert does not mean it was caused by the vaccine.” That has been done. Someone still trying to pick that particular nit would be advocating the double standard “We will admit that terrible events can happen that aren’t connected to the vaccine, but only among people who didn’t get the vaccine. Among any persons who received the vaccine, any terrible events that happen must have been caused by the vaccine.”

I, too, was regularly slathered with Merthiolate–NOT mercurochrome (I have looked up both and can’t really see a difference), but my Mom insisted on Merthiolate and poured it over any and all cuts and scrapes. It burned like crazy! I never painted it on myself, but I certainly was exposed to a lot of it. Readers have to remember that my parents grew up in a pre-antibiotic world where a cut could kill you and they were absolutely terrified of infection.

Oh, it was, under the “Les Lane” entry, IIRC. The link in the quoted comment was to a WP blog (again, as I recall).

Ya, the little twit has been stalking me on months-old WP blog posts. For someone who claims to be looking for a job and finds the comments he makes damaging to that prospect, Travis Schwochert sure loves shooting himself in the foot.

My point as that it as one hat he pulled out his ass; G—le had never head of it. It’s been a while since I toyed around with WP, but my inference was that he was trying to gather addresses from traffic that would have come only from here.

Of the ten IP addresses I have gotten from the website, two are in West Atlanta.

Which proves that one or more commenters (it may in fact be the same one) uses an ISP with facilities in West Atlanta, not necessarily that any of our commentariat live there.

When I go online at home, my ISP assigns me an IP address, which can vary from session to session. When I have had occasion to check where the internet thinks I am, and I am not on a site that has prompted me at some point for a zip code, it has come up with at least four different towns, the closest of which is 35 miles away (and sometimes as much as 60 miles).

No, I am not in Georgia, and it has been well over a decade since I was last in Georgia (not counting airline connections at ATL).

Not that living in West Atlanta would prove any connection to the CDC. I live a few miles from a large office campus where a major insurance company does much of their work. Does that make me a shill for Big Insurance? No, it’s just a coincidence. And I live in an area with a much lower population density than Atlanta inside/along 285.

When I go online at home, my ISP assigns me an IP address, which can vary from session to session. When I have had occasion to check where the internet thinks I am, and I am not on a site that has prompted me at some point for a zip code, it has come up with at least four different towns, the closest of which is 35 miles away (and sometimes as much as 60 miles).

Competent geolocation on a DSL line, at least, should cough up the “central office” (where the copper pairs originate), which is good too about 14,000 feet last I checked. Cable infrastructure is a bit more intricate, and I haven’t really looked at what fiber to a remote terminal would yield.

For mobile, though, all bets are off. One of my phones is “in” Dallas, and the other is 800–1200 miles N/NE, depending on its mood.

I’m not so sure. Travis Schwochert of Endeavor, Wisconsin, isn’t going to be in consideration for what we call a ‘position of trust’ anytime in his life. About the only thing he seems to be qualified for would be a job that just ask for a mostly clean criminal and driving record, and he’ll just squeak by on that, maybe. Any company he applies to isn’t likely to care if he’s an anti-science idiot, as long as he shows up on time, accomplishes the simple task he’s given without too many errors, and doesn’t $#!+ on the floor. However, I may be wrong, so I’m all for giving Travis Schwochert of Endeavor, Wisconsin all the Google-juice he wants.

IRT the IP addresses Travis ‘collected’ and their locations – as Eric notes, depending on the lookup source you use, locations can be off by 10’s or 100’s of miles. I just checked 3, and the best I can say is that they all had the same state, but they thought I was in two different cities, one of which is the other end of the state, and the other is at least in the same county. At best, Travis might know where your ISP point-of-presence is.

But, if your worried, or just for the fun of it, cycle the power on your modem, and you are likely to pull a different IP from your ISP. I did.

It appears that players on several NHL teams have come down with the mumps. Teams are now providing MMR vaccine to players. Playing NHL hockey may need to be listed on package inserts if any of the newly vaccinated players get the mumps.

This may be a way of increasing the uptake of MMR vaccine. Wow, if I get the MMR vaccine I can play in the NHL

[email protected]: Those last two sentences sound like a threat. Take him seriously, and take care of yourself.

Seriously. I have seen at least one such obsession turn deadly. I call it the Case of the Mild-Mannered Axe Murderer. I was introduced to him by one of his eventual victims.

That relationship was entirely in meatspace (it was back in the days when the Internet was mostly an academic/DOD plaything), but just because you and Fendlesworth only “know” each other online doesn’t make it less real.

Thanks Eric but Travis is just an annoying troll with too much time on his hands and obviously no control over his life hence his weird obsessions. Even if he thinks he can expose me; it would be rather meaningless.

Well, he is showing me some old familiar commenters who haven’t commented here in several years. The last time the real Chemgeek commented was in 2010. Talk about having waaay too much time on his hands.

According to the FDA, the Adverse Reaction section on the vaccine insert includes events “for which there is some basis to believe there is a causal relationship between the drug and the occurrence of the adverse event.” But by all means, link us to an insert that lists “car accident” or “drowning.”

You asked for it; you got it. Now, will you do the honest thing and admit “Okay, my belief that anything mentioned in the “adverse events” section must be something almost certainly caused by the vaccine has been shown incorrect”?

If you did that, I have to admit, I’d have a tiny shred of respect for you. Somehow I doubt I need to hold my breath, though.

Yep, sure enough, “motor vehicle accident” is there for the placebo group. Interesting…since it was for the placebo group, there would presumably be no “reason to believe there [was] a causal relationship between the drug and the occurrence of the adverse event” that would be required by FDA regulations to be listed. Maybe, since the only other adverse event was “heart failure” for the placebo group, they wanted to balance out the “cerebrovascular accident, lumbar radiculopathy, and pancreatitis/myocardial infarction resulting in death” that occurred for the vaccine group. 🙂

As for your claim that I expressed a “belief that anything mentioned in the ‘adverse events’ section must be something almost certainly caused by the vaccine,” that is simply false. Here is a quote from one of my comments in that regard:

“In fact, NO ONE as far as I can see has claimed that the listing of an adverse event on the manufacturer’s vaccine insert amounts to PROOF POSITIVE that the vaccine caused the injury. And yet, so many keep trying to ‘dispel a misconception’ that never happened.”

I simply quoted the FDA regulation regarding what must be listed on the insert, which is an event “for which there is some basis to believe there is a causal relationship between the drug and the occurrence of the adverse event.” But I can see why the insert might go above and beyond what’s required to be listed when it comes to adverse events from a placebo. 🙂

Whine about phrasing all you like; what no reasonable person can deny is that in nearly every comment you’ve made on this post, you’ve been pushing the notion that the adverse events section of a vaccine insert is something that everyone should be reading to understand the “risks” of the vaccine – which is a terrible idea since it’s neither written for that purpose nor suitable for that purpose.

When we tried to explain why an adverse events section fails to provide a realistic picture of the risks — among other things, because it includes things like “motor vehicle accident” and “drowning”, you asserted that it didn’t contain such events. You went so far as to say that those who asserted — correctly — that it did were “making a mockery” of themselves.

When you were proved wrong, you mysteriously disappeared.

When you learned your midnight flit hadn’t escaped notice, you pretended not to know which challenge of yours had been met, as if you couldn’t find out in five seconds with Ctrl-F.

When the evidence of your assertions being wrong was presented to you — for a second time — you didn’t do the intellectually honest thing and say “I guess I was wrong”. You just tried to redirect the conversation to baseless insinuations that the adverse event section is written according to a double standard biased in favor of the vaccine — as if you hadn’t already shown that you have no idea how the adverse event section is written.

Do me a favor. Look yourself in the mirror and say “I was utterly convinced of something. Someone proved to me I was wrong about that. However, I absolutely refuse to learn from my mistake.” See how proud of yourself you feel.

Nice try, Antaeus. Do you really think people can’t read through the comments and form their own conclusions? Seems like you’re just betting they won’t, and will rely on your scathing condemnation of me instead. It won’t work for anyone who is really here to learn. But but I’m sure you’ll get plenty of applause for it. 😀

I saw the question. It didn’t deserve an answer because it’s none of your business. But I’ll answer anyway. I was trained up the same way everyone is: to believe that vaccines are “safe and effective and saved the world.” I had a few growing up. Thankfully, there weren’t any more of them. Nothing like the dozens of vaccines children are subjected to now, even for diseases that were common and not feared at all when I was a child, like chicken pox, mumps and measles.

I started investigating vaccines about 10 years ago. Over time, I’ve come to conclude that no parent who has complete and accurate information about vaccines and the diseases they are designed to prevent would ever vaccinate themselves or their children. If you want to take them yourself, go for it.

“Diet, injections, and injunctions will combine, from a very early age, to produce the sort of character and the sort of beliefs that the authorities consider desirable, and any serious criticism of the powers that be will become psychologically impossible.” — Bertrand Russell, The Impact of Science on Society (1952)

NWO in this portion of a sentence: for which there is some basis to believe there is a causal relationship, replaced the word may with is. This word replacement changes the whole meaning of the sentence.

Over time, I’ve come to conclude that no parent who has complete and accurate information about vaccines and the diseases they are designed to prevent would ever vaccinate themselves or their children.

Frankly, you would not know. If at any point you’d ever come into contact with a parent who has complete and accurate information about vaccines and the diseases they prevent, you’d do your very best to load them up with nonsense like “all these things must be risks of the vaccine because they’re listed in the adverse events section of the package insert.”

That clears up where you’re coming from, Antaeus. No person acting with sound ethics would try to convince people that the adverse events listed on a vaccine insert are irrelevant. They are obviously important considerations when weighing risks and potential benefits.

It is not, as the rest of us have been trying to explain, a section written for legal reasons which tries to cover eventualities even if those eventualities are far-fetched, the way the warning label on a consumer power drill warns you not to use it as a dental drill.

Instead, it is a section full of important considerations. There obviously must be tons of people out there going to Lowe’s and buying Black and Decker drills on the assumption that they are now prepared for dentistry, as proven by the warning label warning them that they shouldn’t. And likewise, a polyvalent pneumococcal vaccine must be quite likely to induce lumbar radiculopathy.

There is no other possibility. If it is mentioned in the adverse events section, it must be an Important Consideration. That is why adverse events section never include things like “motor vehicle accident resulting in death”. That’s why they never mention things that happened in the placebo group. Right?

I mean, it’s not like you came right out and asserted that, and then got your bluff called, and got proven entirely wrong… right? I guess when you are self-proclaimed to have “sound ethics”, that takes precedence over connection to reality.

So, adverse events that were actually observed during vaccine trials are “far-fetched”? Ridiculous. Comparing a decision to inject foreign substances into your body with purchasing a drill? Ridiculous.

Again, you are encouraging people to view adverse events observed following vaccination as irrelevant, and only mentioned for “legal reasons.” Interesting theory, considering vaccine manufacturers have been immune from liability for harms caused by their products since the 1980s. You sound like a vaccine salesman. 🙂

Explain in detail. Who is “he” and what is the “Kool-Aid” you speak of? Support your answers with PubMed indexed studies by reputable qualified researchers, especially if you have evidence that any vaccine on the present American pediatric schedule causes more harm than the disease.

Why not address the very foundation of the vaccine paradigm–that vaccines saved us from deadly diseases? Link us to a graph or chart of mortality rates from common diseases in the US or UK starting around 1900, and/or a graph/chart of lasting serious morbidity for the same period.

Please do not try to mislead with: (1) partial data that does not address the dramatic declines in mortality from 1900-1950; (2) data regarding incidence rates, which are irrelevant to the issue of mortality or lasting serious morbidity; (3) polio data, since the criteria for diagnosis changed shortly after the vaccine was licensed, resulting in a dramatic but illusory reduction in cases that would skew the results; or (4) data that conflates rates from the third world and the industrialized world.

And preferably include diseases, like scarlet fever, for which there has never been a vaccine, so we can compare how morbidity dramatically declined from 1900-1950, the same as it did for common diseases which are now allegedly “vaccine preventable,” long before the vaccines were licensed.

I can do what I have requested of you, at least with regard to mortality. But rather than deal with the inevitable flood of unsupported ad hominem attacks against the researchers, I thought it would be easiest to start with your evidence concerning the above and go from there.

42 U.S. Code § 300aa–22:
(b) (1) No vaccine manufacturer shall be liable in a civil action for damages arising from a vaccine-related injury or death associated with the administration of a vaccine after October 1, 1988, if the injury or death resulted from side effects that were unavoidable even though the vaccine was properly prepared and was accompanied by proper directions and warnings.

In a 6-2 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that NCVIA does preempt state design defect claims. What this means is that if a vaccine causes an injury despite the maker following all proper good manufacturing practices and including appropriate directions for its use, as well as reasonable warnings about the risks, then the claimant has to go through the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program first; they cannot just sue in state court from the get-go.

…

Judicial decisions tend to be rather narrow in their focus. For instance, when it comes to products liability, there is a good deal more than just “design defect” claims. There are also manufacturing defects and labeling defects. Bruesewitz only declared that design defects are preempted by NCVIA; the other two types of defect are still open avenues for tort actions in state court. If an injury resulted from negligent manufacturing practices or labeling defects, the company can still be sued under state law, rather than through the Vaccine Court. Therefore, the claim that vaccine manufacturers are shielded from all liability (or even just all products liability) is demonstrably false. Anyone who says otherwise is lying (either through misunderstanding or deliberate deceit).

So not only do you choose to post INCIDENCE rates instead of rates of mortality or serious lasting morbidity, but you choose POLIO, which I specifically listed a reason not to include. Come on, Chris–you’ve got lots of other diseases to choose from here. 😀

Curiously, the very next section of the code describes how to establish liability and seek general and punitive remedies in “a civil action against a vaccine manufacturer for damages for a vaccine-related injury or death associated with the administration of a vaccine.”

42 U.S. Code § 300aa–22
(2) For purposes of paragraph (1), a vaccine shall be presumed to be accompanied by proper directions and warnings if the vaccine manufacturer shows that it complied in all material respects with all requirements under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act [21 U.S.C. 301 et seq.] and section 262 of this title (including regulations issued under such provisions) applicable to the vaccine and related to vaccine-related injury or death for which the civil action was brought unless the plaintiff shows—

(A) that the manufacturer engaged in the conduct set forth in subparagraph (A) or (B) of section 300aa–23 (d)(2) of this title, or
(B) by clear and convincing evidence that the manufacturer failed to exercise due care notwithstanding its compliance with such Act and section (and regulations issued under such provisions).

And while we’re at it, let’s mention this provision, too. That’s some very generous liability protection. They don’t even have liability for failing to directly warn people about the dangers of the vaccine. Wow.

42 U.S. Code § 300aa–22
(c) Direct warnings
No vaccine manufacturer shall be liable in a civil action for damages arising from a vaccine-related injury or death associated with the administration of a vaccine after October 1, 1988, solely due to the manufacturer’s failure to provide direct warnings to the injured party (or the injured party’s legal representative) of the potential dangers resulting from the administration of the vaccine manufactured by the manufacturer.

What–shocked that two different people would be on this blog exposing vaccine fraud? Lol. Anyway, it looked like you were making an attempt to support your contention that vaccines saved us from deadly diseases. Did you come up with any of the mortality data I was asking for that would demonstrate that?

if the injury or death resulted from side effects that were unavoidable even though the vaccine was properly prepared and was accompanied by proper directions and warnings.

“side effects that were unavoidable”.
So if the vaccine was made in a way that caused side effects that were avoidable but could be made in a different way that didn’t cause said side effects and was equally as effective, the manufacturer could still be sued.
” the vaccine was properly prepared and was accompanied by proper directions and warnings.”
So if the vaccine wasn’t properly prepared, and/or wasn’t accompanied by proper directions and warnings, the manufacturer could be sued.
The very words you quote show that manufacturers are not immune from liability.

True. Vaccine manufacturers are immune from liability, as long as the vaccine was properly prepared and was accompanied by proper directions and warnings–even if they decline to directly warn people about the dangers of the vaccine.

The immunity from liability is qualified, as common sense indicates it would have to be. Otherwise they could sell vials of any cheap chemical they wanted to, and there would be no problem—especially in any circumstance where taking it is mandatory to go to school or keep ones job, as in California, or in certain jobs.

Still, other product manufacturers don’t enjoy such a lucrative luxury as this kind of immunity from liability for serious harms and deaths caused by their product–even prescription drug manufacturers.

Again, you are encouraging people to view adverse events observed following vaccination as irrelevant, and only mentioned for “legal reasons.” Interesting theory, considering vaccine manufacturers have been immune from liability for harms caused by their products since the 1980s.

Exception that your own quotation of the law points directly to where your summation of it is incorrect. To wit:

42 U.S. Code § 300aa–22:
(b) (1) No vaccine manufacturer shall be liable in a civil action for damages arising from a vaccine-related injury or death associated with the administration of a vaccine after October 1, 1988, if the injury or death resulted from side effects that were unavoidable even though the vaccine was properly prepared and was accompanied by proper directions and warnings.

In other words, of the three classes of product liability lawsuits (design defect, manufacturing defect, and warning defect) the law holds that manufacturers are not liable for design defects but does not immunize them against manufacturing defects (i.e., they did not prepare the vaccine properly) or warning defects (i.e., they did not give proper directions and warnings.)

I mean, do I have to explain this further? Because, see, you looked right at it and you even copy-pasted it but very clearly you didn’t try to understand it. 42 U.S. Code § 300aa–22 (b) (1) says that if a vaccine manufacturer wants to be immune from product liability claims, they have to ensure that the product is prepared properly and that the proper directions and warnings are given.

In other words, their immunity clearly depends upon their meeting certain requirements. And here you are, citing the very section of the law which spells out the requirements that they have to meet, yet denying that the manner in which the adverse effects section is written could be driven by a desire to meet those requirements? Are you seriously trying to claim that you cannot comprehend what’s right there in front of you?

I really find that hard to believe — but guess what? To show that it’s not the pro-vaccine side that refuses to think things through, I’ll bend over backwards and walk you through it. Suppose there are two individuals, A and B, who take two different vaccines (Alphavax and Betavax) and then, within a certain time period, experience seriously harmful gunshot wounds.*

Now, the makers of Alphavax noted in the trials of the vaccine that there were deaths by gunshot wounds in both the vaccine and control groups. They included that information in their product insert. The makers of Betavax noted the same thing in the trials of their vaccine, but they said (contrary to common practice) “We don’t need to include that, it’s silly! Who would ever believe that receiving a vaccination would be a contributor to a gunshot wound? We’ll just leave that out of the adverse events section.”

Well, guess what? A and B both want to take their cases to court.

The makers of Alphavax noted, accurately, that there were gunshot wounds among the members of the study population. A’s case goes nowhere because the makers put that information on the insert; there’s no grounds to claim they didn’t give sufficient warning, so a claim against the manufacturer is pre-empted.

The manufacturer of Betavax knew that some individuals who took their vaccine (and also some who got a placebo) suffered gunshot wounds. They made a decision not to disclose that information. Their logic was “Well, isn’t it obvious that the cause of a gunshot wound isn’t a vaccine, it’s someone firing a gun?” But just because B’s case is preposterous (“The vaccine affected my judgment; I never would have gotten into a fight with a biker in a bar with a concealed weapon if I hadn’t been vaccinated the week before!”) doesn’t mean he won’t find a lawyer willing to argue it in court, in hopes of a big payday.

Will the makers of Betavax win or lose in court? Who knows? What’s certain is that the makers of Betavax would probably have avoided court altogether if, like the makers of Alphavax, they had simply said “Look, if there’s any ‘basis to believe there is a causal relationship between the drug and the occurrence of the adverse event’, we’ll put the event in the section, period. We’re not going to endanger ourselves by trying to pass a judgment on whether there’s a truly plausible basis for belief, on which we might get second-guessed later.”

So, again — anyone arguing that adverse event sections of vaccine package inserts are written to exclude all events which aren’t plausibly caused by the vaccine — is just plain wrong. That’s proven by the fact that they even include events which happened in the placebo group. Anyone who is arguing that vaccine manufacturers have an all-encompassing and unconditional protection from lawsuits — again, is just plain wrong. The conditions are there, being quoted by the very people trying to claim the unconditionality of the protection.

* Anyone who’d like to claim “Oh, now you’re making a mockery of yourself; it’s preposterous to think any vaccine insert would list gunshot wounds” — again. Wrong. And such a person should really start wondering why they’re wrong so often, if the ten years they spent “investigating” vaccines was really time well-spent.

NWO Reporter: “What–shocked that two different people would be on this blog exposing vaccine fraud?”

Uh, huh. The fact that the person I was responding to is someone who insists on creating several sock puppets because he wants to look like a crown does is totally lost on you.

Also mortality rates only measure improvements in medical care. The invention of artificial ventilation prevented the death from suffocation due to paralysis or fluid in the lungs because of actual diseases. The invention of antibiotics prevented death from secondary infections from immune suppression by the actual disease.

It has nothing to do with the effectiveness of vaccines. Though you thinking it does, along with thinking I was addressing you in a comment startin with ‘Alan Miller: “…”‘ pretty much shows your low level of reading comprehension. Which is precisely why I have been actively ignoring you.

So, you’ve got NO EVIDENCE to back up your contention that vaccines saved us from deadly diseases. You know–if you’ve looked–that deaths from common diseases declined dramatically long before the vaccines were ever licensed–and before the widespread use of antibiotics or artificial ventilation, to the extent those might play a role in survival. You likely know that vast improvements in nutrition, sanitation and living conditions were responsible for that decline.

Yet, here you are, trying to convince people that vaccines saved us from deadly diseases, and that they should incur the unavoidable risks of vaccines anyway. This is why vaccines are being exposed as the fraud they are.

Someone (HDB? Dangerous B?) recently linked to a graph disliked by some bozo because it was a semi log plot. I want to look at it again, but can’t find the right thread. Can someone point me at it, SVP?

Travis Schwochert of Endeavor, Wisconsin,, just remember that there are no stupid questions, just stupid people, like you.

The best argument for the effectiveness of vaccines is that we’ve made smallpox extinct in the wild, and polio is seriously endangered and about to be extinct.

Yes, the flu vaccine is not very effective in the years that the predicted strain is poorly matched to the strain that does circulate that year. In years that there is a good match, the flu vaccine is very effective. It’s not a difficult concept, but it probably is more than your pea-brain can understand. Seriously, Travis, how do you manage to walk and breath at the same time?

Animal studies of vaccines? Spend 20 minuets with the great Google, and you can find lots of examples. But given your idiocy, it may be too difficult for you. If it is, let us know, m’kay?

doug, I looked in recent threads for that semilog measles death graph that I posted and can’t find it either. It was featured in an article by Roman Bystrianyk (Suzanne Humphries’ co-author) wherein he attempted to explain why it was inferior to his preferred graphs.